- Sixteen tons and what you get is a nuclear catastrophe.
The explosions that rocked the Fukushima No.1 nuclear plant were more powerful
than the combustion of hydrogen gas, as claimed by the Tokyo Electric Power
Company. The actual cause of the blasts, according to intelligence sources
in Washington, was nuclear fission of. warhead cores illegally taken from
America's sole nuclear-weapons assembly facility. Evaporation in the cooling
pools used for spent fuel rods led to the detonation of stored weapons-grade
plutonium and uranium.
-
- The facts about clandestine American and Israeli support
for Japan's nuclear armament are being suppressed in the biggest official
cover-up in recent history. The timeline of events indicates the theft
from America's strategic arsenal was authorized at the highest level under
a three-way deal between the Bush-Cheney team, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe
and Elhud Olmert's government in Tel Aviv.
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- Tokyo's Strangelove
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- In early 2007, Vice President Dick Cheney flew to Tokyo
with his closest aides. Newspaper editorials noted the secrecy surrounding
his visit - no press conferences, no handshakes with ordinary folks and,
as diplomatic cables suggest, no briefing for U.S. Embassy staffers in
Tokyo.
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- Cheney snubbed Defense Minister Fumio Kyuma, who was
shut out of confidential talks. The pretext was his criticism of President
George Bush for claiming Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. The
more immediate concern was that the defense minister might disclose bilateral
secrets to the Pentagon. The Joint Chiefs of Staff were sure to oppose
White House approval of Japan's nuclear program.
-
- An unannounced reason for Cheney's visit was to promote
a quadrilateral alliance in the Asia-Pacific region. The four cornerstones
- the US, Japan, Australia and India - were being called on to contain
and confront China and its allies North Korea and Russia.. From a Japanese
perspective, this grand alliance was flawed by asymmetry: The three adversaries
were nuclear powers, while the U.S. was the only one in the Quad group.
-
- To further his own nuclear ambitions, Abe was playing
the Russian card. As mentioned in a U.S. Embassy cable (dated 9/22), the
Yomiuri Shimbun gave top play to this challenge to the White House : "It
was learned yesterday that the government and domestic utility companies
have entered final talks with Russia in order to relegate uranium enrichment
for use at nuclear power facilities to Atomprom, the state-owned nuclear
monopoly." If Washington refused to accept a nuclear-armed Japan,
Tokyo would turn to Moscow.
-
- Since the Liberal Democratic Party selected him as prime
minister in September 2006, the hawkish Abe repeatedly called for Japan
to move beyond the postwar formula of a strictly defensive posture and
non-nuclear principles. Advocacy of a nuclear-armed Japan arose from his
family tradition. His grandfather Nobusuke Kishi nurtured the wartime atomic
bomb project and, as postwar prime minister, enacted the civilian nuclear
program. His father Shintaro Abe, a former foreign minister, had played
the Russian card in the 1980s, sponsoring the Russo-Japan College, run
by the Aum Shinrikyo sect (a front for foreign intelligence), to recruit
weapons scientists from a collapsing Soviet Union.
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- The chief obstacle to American acceptance of a nuclear-armed
Japan was the Pentagon, where Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima remain as iconic
symbols justifying American military supremacy.The only feasible channel
for bilateral transfers then was through the civilian-run Department of
Energy (DoE), which supervises the production of nuclear weapons.
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- Camp David Go-Ahead
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- The deal was sealed on Abe's subsequent visit to Washington.
Wary of the eavesdropping that led to Richard Nixon's fall from grace,
Bush preferred the privacy afforded at Camp David. There, in a rustic lodge
on April 27, Bush and Abe huddled for 45 minutes. What transpired has never
been revealed, not even in vague outline.
-
- As his Russian card suggested, Abe was shopping for enriched
uranium. At 99.9 percent purity, American-made uranium and plutonium is
the world's finest nuclear material. The lack of mineral contaminants means
that it cannot be traced back to its origin. In contrast, material from
Chinese and Russian labs can be identified by impurities introduced during
the enrichment process.
-
- Abe has wide knowledge of esoteric technologies. His
first job in the early 1980s was as a manager at Kobe Steel. One of the
researchers there was astrophysicist Hideo Murai, who adapted Soviet electromagnetic
technology to "cold mold" steel. Murai later became chief scientist
for the Aum Shinrikyo sect, which recruited Soviet weapons technicians
under the program initiated by Abe's father. After entering government
service, Abe was posted to the U.S. branch of JETRO (Japan External Trade
Organization). Its New York offices hosted computers used to crack databases
at the Pentagon and major defense contractors to pilfer advanced technology.
The hacker team was led by Tokyo University's top gamer, who had been recruited
into Aum.
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- After the Tokyo subway gassing in 1995, Abe distanced
himself from his father's Frankenstein cult with a publics-relations campaign.
Fast forward a dozen years and Abe is at Camp David. After the successful
talks with Bush, Abe flew to India to sell Cheney's quadrilateral pact
to a Delhi skeptical about a new Cold War. Presumably, Cheney fulfilled
his end of the deal. Soon thereafter Hurricane Katrina struck, wiping away
the Abe visit from the public memory.
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- The Texas Job
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- BWXT Pantex, America's nuclear warhead facility, sprawls
over 16,000 acres of the Texas Panhandle outside Amarillo. Run by the DoE
and Babcock & Wilson, the site also serves as a storage facility for
warheads past their expiration date. The 1989 shutdown of Rocky Flats,
under community pressure in Colorado, forced the removal of those nuclear
stockpiles to Pantex. Security clearances are required to enter since it
is an obvious target for would-be nuclear thieves.
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- In June 2004, a server at the Albuquerque office of the
National Nuclear Security System was hacked. Personal information and security-clearance
data for 11 federal employees and 177 contractors at Pantex were lifted.
NNSA did not inform Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman or his deputy Clay Sell
until three months after the security breach, indicating investigators
suspected an inside job.
-
- While Bush and Abe met at Camp David, 500 unionized security
guards at Pantex launched a 45-day strike. Scabs were hired, but many failed
to pass the entry exam, according to the Inspector General's office at
DoE. The IG report cited witnesses who said: "BWXT officials gave
passing grades to some replacement guards even though they actually flunked
tests," and "contractor officials gave correct answers to those
that failed the tests." Although the scene was nearly as comical as
the heist in "Ocean's Eleven", Pantex is not some Vegas casino.
At stake was nuclear Armageddon.
-
- At an opportune moment during the two-month strike, trucks
loaded with warhead cores rolled out of the gates. Some 16 metric tons
of nuclear cores packed in caskets were hauled away in refrigerated containers
to prevent fission. At the port of Houston, the dangerous cargo was loaded
aboard vessels operated by an Israeli state-owned shipping line. The radioactive
material was detected by port inspector Roland Carnaby, a private contractor
working under the federal program to interdict weapons of mass destruction.
-
- The intelligence community is still buzzing about his
shooting death. On April 29, 2008, Houston police officers pursued Carnaby
on a highway chase and gunned him down. His port monitoring contract was
later awarded to the Israel-based security firm NICE (Neptune Intelligence
Computer Engineering), owned by former Israeli Defense Force officers.
-
- Throughout the Pantex caper, from the data theft to smuggling
operation, Bush and Cheney's point man for nuclear issues was DoE Deputy
Director Clay Sell, a lawyer born in Amarillo and former aide to Panhandle
district Congressman Mac Thornberry. Sell served on the Bush-Cheney transition
team and became the top adviser to the President on nuclear issues. At
DoE, Sell was directly in charge of the U.S. nuclear weapons complex, which
includes 17 national laboratories and the Pantex plant. (Another alarm
bell: Sell was also staff director for the Senate Energy subcommittee under
the late Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska, who died in a 2010 plane crash.)
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- An Israeli Double-Cross
-
- The nuclear shipments to Japan required a third-party
cutout for plausible deniability by the White House. Israel acted less
like an agent and more like a broker in demanding additional payment from
Tokyo, according to intelligence sources. Adding injury to insult, the
Israelis skimmed off the newer warhead cores for their own arsenal and
delivered older ones. Since deteriorated cores require enrichment, the
Japanese were furious and demanded a refund, which the Israelis refused.
Tokyo had no recourse since by late 2008 principals Abe had resigned the
previous autumn and Bush was a lame duck.
-
- The Japanese nuclear developers, under the Ministry of
Economy, Trade and Industry, had no choice but to enrich the uranium cores
at Fukushima No.1, a location remote enough to evade detection by nonproliferation
inspectors. Hitachi and GE had developed a laser extraction process for
plutonium, which requires vast amounts of electrical power. This meant
one reactor had to make unscheduled runs, as was the case when the March
earthquake struck.
-
- Tokyo dealt a slap on the wrist to Tel Aviv by backing
Palestinian rights at the UN. Not to be bullied, the Israeli secret service
launched the Stuxnet virus against Japan's nuclear facilities.
-
- Firewalls kept Stuxnet at bay until the Tohoku earthquake.
The seismic activity felled an electricity tower behind Reactor 6. The
power cut disrupted the control system, momentarily taking down the firewall.
As the computer came online again, Stuxnet infiltrated to shut down the
back-up generators. During the 20-minute interval between quake and tsunami,
the pumps and valves at Fukushima No.1 were immobilized, exposing the turbine
rooms to flood damage.
-
- The flow of coolant water into the storage pools ceased,
quickening evaporation. Fission of the overheated cores led to blasts and
mushroom-clouds. Residents in mountaintop Iitate village overlooking the
seaside plant saw plumes of smoke and could "taste the metal"
in their throats.
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- Guilty as Charged
-
- The Tohoku earthquake and tsunami were powerful enough
to damage
- Fukushima No.1. The natural disaster, however, was vastly
amplified by two external factors: release of the Stuxnet virus, which
shut down control systems in the critical 20 minutes prior to the tsunami;
and presence of weapons-grade nuclear materials that devastated the nuclear
facility and contaminated the entire region.
-
- Of the three parties involved, which bears the greatest
guilt? All three are guilty of mass murder, injury and destruction of property
on a regional scale, and as such are liable for criminal prosecution and
damages under international law and in each respective jurisdiction.
-
- The White House, specifically Bush, Cheney and their
co-conspirators in the DoE, hold responsibility for ordering the illegal
removal and shipment of warheads without safeguards.
-
- The state of Israel is implicated in theft from U.S.
strategic stockpiles, fraud and extortion against the Japanese government,
and a computer attack against critical infrastructure with deadly consequences,
tantamount to an act of war.
-
- Prime Minister Abe and his Economy Ministry sourced weapons-grade
nuclear material in violation of constitutional law and in reckless disregard
of the risks of unregulated storage, enrichment and extraction. Had Abe
not requested enriched uranium and plutonium in the first place, the other
parties would not now be implicated. Japan, thus, bears the onus of the
crime.
-
- The International Criminal Court has sufficient grounds
for taking up a case that involves the health of millions of people in
Japan, Canada, the United States, Russia, the Koreas, Mongolia, China and
possibly the entire Northern Hemisphere. The Fukushima disaster is more
than an human-rights charge against a petty dictator, it is a crime against
humanity on par with the indictments at the Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals.
Failure to prosecute is complicity.
-
- If there is a silver lining to every dark cloud, it's
that the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami saved the world from even greater
folly by halting the drive to World War III.
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